Less than six months after installation of a Komori Lithrone G29 H-UV, Print Digital Media has enjoyed a 35-40% drop in energy consumption, is able to turn around jobs faster and has enhanced its environmental credentials.
“Instead of sheets sitting for 18 hours waiting to dry, the job can go straight to finishing and we can turn stuff out faster than we could before,” says managing director Richard Musgrove. “It is making a big difference – we can double print capacity, enabling us to print 400,000 sheets in a 24-hour period.”
This is thanks not only to the speed of the press, but also because work in progress is no longer occupying floor space so work can now move directly from the press to finishing without fear of marking. The Komori replaced a Speedmaster CD74.
“That is going to make a big difference,” he says. “We can take on more volume because we don’t have work in progress waiting to dry.”
The environmental credentials of the press are also providing the company with a competitive advantage. The inks used have no solvents, Musgrove points out, “and we’re not throwing spray powder around, so it’s a lot cleaner”.
The Chesterfield printer has a strong hand in events, producing programmes for football, cricket and other sports clubs. As lockdown restrictions have eased volumes have returned. Print Digital Media is, however, not sitting back waiting for work to return. Musgrove became a director in 2019, taking on a more active role earlier this year, he says. “We haven’t been as proactive with the client base as we should have been,” he says. That is changing. “Now we have taken on more people to manage the clients.”
Combined with the strong environmental message, this will provide a bulwark against the online printers by focusing on direct relationships with print specifiers. “You can’t have a relationship with Google. Online print can be a bit like Ryan Air – what seems like a good price can quickly build up. And what you see on a laptop can be nothing like the final job.
“We, on the other hand, can provide the samples, the digital mock ups – of greetings cards for example – because these customers do not always know what they want. And with the new press we too can print and deliver quickly. A customer can sign off a job at 2pm on a Friday and can receive the job by 10am on a Wednesday. That’s a 48-hour turnaround.
“We can be as fast as a trade printer, but we can bring value and personal service.”
